Very beautiful post………….
We can do what is in my hands. Perhaps that is why it is said in the Gita that you do not worry about the consequences only because it is not in your hands.The result is subject to destiny and we all are not born free, we are prisoners of destiny.

I like this one but I’m not sure I fully believe it. I think of destiny less like a destination (you will end up happy, you will have a lawyer, you will have an unhappy relationship) and more like a river we are floating down. Some places the current is strong and we only just work to stay afloat. Other times, we can affect our direction a little. We are definitely going downstream, but we can dodge rocks, find comfortable spots to rest, and avoid eddies that keep us going in circles. If we paddle more we will get used to it and get better at navigating the stream. If we say “what will happen is already determined” we will take whatever the river gives us – and sometimes that means we will be smashed on the rocks before we fully get started.

Todd, thank you so much for discussing this at length. I really appreciate it.

You are right in certain ways and I too agree that there may be instances when we can affect the way our lives are turning out. But when I think of all those times when nothing seems to go the way I’d like it, or those instances when I have had to give up on things because there’s no way around it, I feel things are predetermined for us humans. Some of us end up doing things or being what they had never imagined themselves to be. It’s in such situations when ‘destiny’ feels like a solid thing steering us in whichever direction she wants.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that we should let it all go. Lord knows if our efforts mean anything at all at the end of our lives, but that’s all we can do – try. The rest isn’t in our hands.

Definitely – there are some parts of our future we can’t escape. To use my river analogy, those things are reachable by branches we’ve already passed or on a different river entirely. The trick is telling those things that are difficult apart from those that are not attainable at all. Some of our best goals are those that, at first glance, seem unattainable but just required a whole lot of work.